Whole Truth Coalition

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, can drive communists, leftists, Greens, and one-world globalists to near apoplectic fury. However, the popular Czech statesman (finance minister, 1989-1992; prime minister, 1992-1997; president since 2003, reelected 2008) has become a hero to a growing tide of Europeans from Prague to London who are resisting the increasingly oppressive rule by the European Union’s bureaucrats in Brussels and the socialist-dominated European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Klaus, a free-market economist who grew up under the tyranny of communism, is an outspoken critic of the “new European Soviet” — as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has approvingly referred to the sprawling EU bureaucracy.

In January, the Czech Republic assumes the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union. Which means that Vaclav Klaus, an adamant “eurosceptic,” will serve as the ceremonial head of the EU, a supranational behemoth which he has described as a threat to freedom and national sovereignty. This will mark a sea change in attitude from that of France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, who is (reluctantly) stepping down from the current EU presidency. Sarkozy has basked in the glory of his EU spotlight and has campaigned for expanded EU powers, most especially for ratification of the stalled Lisbon Treaty. President Klaus has campaigned just as energetically in opposition to the Lisbon Treaty, a slightly disguised version of the EU Constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters.

President Klaus also stirs opponents to paroxysms of frenzied sputtering by referring to human-caused global warming as a myth, and by his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol and other climate change regulatory regimes. I interviewed him for The New American in New York City in March 2008, where he was a main speaker at the International Conference of Climate Change, featuring top scientists from around the world who challenge the Al Gore-United Nations thesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

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What is the definition of a Conspiracy Theory? Wikipedia definition here, Another definition of “Conspiracy Theory” from Webster’s Online Dictionary:
” A conspiracy theory is the belief that historical or current events are the result of manipulations by one or more secretive powers or conspiracies.”

Where on Earth might one hear of such a paranoid idea? How about from President John F. Kennedy?

Or how about President Eisenhower? Watch this segment of the entire Eisenhower farewell below:

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A teacher who won £250,000 compensation after a pupil tried to strangle him has criticised a ‘can’t touch’ culture in schools after other staff initially refused to intervene.

Colin Adams, 50, was attacked by a 12- year- old boy, who knocked him to the floor before punching and kicking him, and grabbing his neck. But despite other teachers yelling at the boy to stop, no one stepped in to help.

Mr Adams’s ordeal ended only after another teacher eventually came to his aid by forcing the boy’s thumbs back to release his hold. Later, the unnamed teacher admitted to Mr Adams that he was afraid the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, would accuse him of assault.

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The 33-year-old woman fled to Ireland with her son in a bid to prevent social services taking him back into care. The British authorities maintain the boy suffered “emotional harm” while witnessing his father’s violent rages against the mother and needs to be placed with a foster family.

But his mother, who has separated from the father, says social workers have never argued that she posed a danger to him and therefore have no case against her.

Devon social services are going to an Irish court in the next few weeks with an international warrant demanding the return of the child, who cannot be identified and is known as Boy L, into their care.

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The Hokey Cokey is an old novelty song that has been sung in music halls, at children’s parties and at sherry-fuelled family gatherings for many years.

But according to the Catholic Church and some Scottish politicians, singing the popular tune that begins with the words “You put your right hand in, your right hand out,” may constitute an act of religious hatred.

A spokesman for the leader of the church in Scotland said the song had disturbing origins.

Critics claim that Puritans composed the song in the 18th century in an attempt to mock the actions and language of priests leading the Latin mass.

Now politicians have urged police to arrest anyone using the song to “taunt” Catholics under legislation designed to prevent incitement to religious hatred.

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Police officers have been forced to attend a health and safety seminar to learn how to climb a ladder.

The officers had been installing roadside electronic speed indicators for months, using a 3ft ladder, without injury or incident.

But when health and safety officials learnt of the scheme they ordered the special training.

Officers were then banned from moving the signs between locations until they had completed the course.

Around 45 officers and more than 80 civilian volunteers have now had the training, organised by the police, Lancashire County Council and Lancashire Fire and Rescue.

Last night MPs reacted with disbelief, saying the scheme was a waste of taxpayer money and police time.

A senior police officer said: ‘It is a preposterous waste of police time and taxpayers’ money and it is time the health and safety Gestapo had their wings clipped so that people can go about their jobs using their own common sense.’

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Gotcha! Left: Rachman at the 2003 Bilderberg Meeting in France; right: Rachman’s mug at his blog

‘“Rapporteur” Gideon Rachman wrote a piece for the Financial Times on Dec. 8th, 2008: “And Now For A World Government.” Let’s take a look.

“I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.”

‘Perhaps you have never believed it, but the elite conclave to which you have been privy certainly have. You neglected to mention your previous attendance of the 2003 and 2004 Bilderberg meetings at Versailles, France, and Stresa, Italy, respectively.

 You see, commoners - dubbed “useless eaters” - have been keeping tabs on the elite confab for 20+ years (call it grass-roots journalism). In 2003 and 2004, you were listed thus: GB - Rachman, Gideon - Brussels Correspondent, The Economist. Traditionally, “Rapporteurs” have been allowed to attend meetings such as these on condition of subservience and silence.

 To the commoners who expect “rapporteurs” to do their job and “report”; it’s called “breach of trust” and collusion. To the “global governance” internationalists; it’s called “Chatham House Rules.”

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The first steps towards the privatisation of Royal Mail will be unveiled this week as ministers prepare to remove the biggest obstacle to its break-up.

Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, is expected to announce that the government is ready to take on the organisation’s ailing pension fund, paving the way for radical reforms to the postal service.

The fund’s deficit is thought to have ballooned to more than £7 billion, double the figure quoted in Royal Mail’s last set of reports and accounts, creating a massive liability for taxpayers.

Ministers believe that Royal Mail’s pension crisis is blocking improvements in the way letters and parcels are sorted and delivered and threatening its survival. They have concluded that there will be no improvement to deliveries while the organisation carries this burden.

By taking responsibility for the £22 billion pension scheme — one of the largest in Britain — the government will make Royal Mail a far more attractive prospect to possible buyers of the business. It will give Royal Mail greater commercial freedom and enable it to open talks with continental rivals.

Successful foreign mail companies could possibly take charge of the sorting and delivery operations or the post office network.

The break-up would cause a political furore. Unions say it would lead to further huge job losses and Labour backbenchers fear that the government may be reneging on an election pledge not to privatise Royal Mail.

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‘Road pricing, the Government’s favoured policy for dealing with congestion, has been roundly rejected in a referendum in Manchester. There now appears little chance of any pay-as-you-drive schemes being introduced for the next decade at least. Manchester’s proposal for peak-time tolls of up to £5 a day was defeated by 4 to 1.’

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Demonstrations against the killing were seen in cities across the continent with left-wing radicals and other sympathisers taking to the streets.

In Spain, 11 protesters were arrested and several police officers injured when clashes took place in Madrid and Barcelona.

In Copenhagen, 32 people were arrested when their protest in support of the Greek protests turned violent.

In neighbouring Turkey, about a dozen left-wing protesters daubed red paint over the front of the Greek consulate in Istanbul.

Around 150 people belonging to a Danish underground movement took to the streets, throwing bottles and paint bombs at buildings, police cars and officers. In Moscow and Rome, protesters threw petrol bombs at Greece’s embassies.

Journalists came under attack for the first time in the riots, with a Russian news crew assaulted by a mob of about 50 youths, some of them reportedly drunk.

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And in Britain one man send a strongly worded letter to his MP and then snoozed off again!

Over 650 scientists have put their names to a US Senate Minority report that challenges the contention of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change that there is a scientific “consensus” on the causes of global warming.

Set to be released within the next 24 hours, the report features contributions from hundreds of prominent researchers, including current and former IPCC scientists, who are now speaking out in opposition of the UN’s stance on climate change.

The Senate report is an updated version of a 2007 release, with over 250 more names added, highlighting how widespread dissent continues to grow in the scientific community to the alleged “consensus” that the modern warming is primarily man-made and is a crisis.

In comparison, twelve times fewer - just 52 scientists - participated in the much touted IPCC Summary for Policymakers meeting in April 2007. Climate scientists allied with the IPCC were recently caught citing fake data to make the case that global warming is accelerating.

The new Senate report will feature new peer-reviewed scientific studies and analyses refuting man-made warming fears.

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We live and struggle in an era of blatantly militarized capitalism and the violence of capital. War, occupation, national security ideologies and repression of dissent –at home and abroad - make for booming business opportunities the world over. As pro-free market US journalist Thomas Friedman succinctly put it: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist - McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.”

Militarized capitalism: The military-industrial complex in 2008

What is the military-industrial complex in 2008? Where is it? What does it look like? I am not even sure if the phrase, used so famously by former US president Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 is the best descriptor to encompass the many tentacles and facets of the war and security industry and the links and connections between capital and its political allies. Do terms like ‘defence industry’ and ‘arms trade’ adequately encompass the face of today’s war profiteers, whose devastating impacts can equally be found in the high-tech apartheid wall being built by Israel to seal off the West Bank and Gaza, and its Western Hemispheric counterpart on the US-Mexico border, in the computer flight simulation programs provided to US and British military by Canada’s CAE, in private corporate mercenary armies like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, in the outsourced intelligence, IT, interrogation and translation services of L-3/Titan, in the massive military aid budgets which the US gives to the governments of Israel, Pakistan, Egypt and Colombia, among others, and in the ‘hearts and minds’ operations of US Special Operations Forces based in the Philippines doing ‘humanitarian work’ - medical, dental and other social services, including infrastructure projects in many remote communities - services which should be the function of a government, in Mindanao, as much as it is in weapons production and arms exports.

Like all transnational corporations, these companies enjoy both patronage and revolving door relationships with the highest echelons of governments and their armed forces, tax breaks, support for exports, and all kinds of other incentives which help them to focus firmly on their bottom line – profit. US administrations, regardless of their party allegiance, brim with politicians with investments and business interests in the defence industry and war profiteers, perhaps most vividly symbolized by Dick Cheney’s ties to Halliburton and its multi-billion-dollar contracts to provide construction, hospitality, and other services to the US military after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But it is business as usual for US militarized capitalism. An April 2008 Centre for Responsive Politics report states that US Congress members invested US $196 million of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contracts to provide goods and services to US armed forces, ranging from aircraft and weapons manufacturers to producers of medical supplies and soft drinks. To cite a couple of typical revolving door examples, General Dynamics board of directors includes an ex-Vice Chief of US Army staff, a former US Air Force General, a former Chief of Naval Operations in the US Navy, and a former Chief of Defence Procurement at the British Ministry of Defence, while Canada’s CAE’s current and former executives include a former Canadian minister for international trade and former PM Mulroney’s head of staff.

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The Irish Government bowed to pressure from European leaders yesterday and rang the starting bell on round two of its battle to pass the Lisbon treaty by rerunning the referendum that it lost decisively last summer.

Opponents of the EU treaty immediately announced the formation of a Europe-wide political party to field anti-treaty candidates in all 27 member states in next June’s European Parliament elections to campaign against the EU’s “growing anti-democratic tendency”.

The pledge by Brian Cowen, the embattled Irish Prime Minister, to ratify the Lisbon treaty by the end of next year put his political reputation and his Government’s future on the line. Mr Cowen could not resist intense lobbying led by President Sarkozy of France to try to salvage a document that was itself drawn up to rescue many of the reforms in the EU constitution that was defeated by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

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The Financial Times

I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.

Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.

But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.

Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet.

A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.

The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.

These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government.

But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.

So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.

But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.

There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.

But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.

The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

I’ve never actually seen a cabinet minister caught on camera with his (or in this case, her) eyes tightly closed before. When Andrew Marr began addressing the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, yesterday morning, she looked as if she was desperately trying to catch up on the sleep she had lost over the past three days.

Or perhaps she was just attempting to shut out the image of Kenneth Clarke, who had preceded her on the air. Mr Clarke had just proclaimed that, if he had been told as Home Secretary that an MP had been arrested and detained in the way that Damian Green had been, he would have insisted on issuing an immediate apology. His reaction to being informed that a senior opposition spokesman who was not suspected of any crime, had had his home and office raided by the police would have been horrified fury.

So, Miss Smith was asked, did she agree with this former occupier of her office that Mr Green was owed an apology? Answer: no. Sort of. It was, in fact, rather difficult to discern what the answer was amid a lot of blather, the main object of which was to hang the police out to dry - they apparently being solely responsible for this extraordinary incident. (I suspect that the next day or two may produce some interesting responses to this performance from the police - quite possibly in the form of leaks.)

Miss Smith soldiered on, making a great deal of the notion of “police independence” - even trying rather ingeniously to turn the argument round on those who see Mr Green’s arrest as an indication of an emerging police state. What would truly constitute a police state, she maintained, would be for ministers to intervene when the police were engaged in an investigation.

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They creep around in the dark spreading misery, rumour and secrets from inside Westminster.

Even so, paperboys and girls are hardly likely to pose a threat to national security.

One local council, however, thought it necessary to use swingeing anti-terror laws against them.

Cambridgeshire County Council used the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on eight paperboys thought to be working without permits.

It sent undercover council officers to lurk outside a Spar in the village of Melbourn and take notes on the movements of the boys.

The evidence was used in a criminal prosecution of the shop’s owners for employing five of the boys without the correct documentation.

Cambridgeshire’s approach is just the latest example of local authorities using the RIPA for minor misdemeanours.

Such activities have been likened to those of the Stasi, the East German secret police.

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‘Britain could be signed up to a controversial European Union Constitution within a year, it has emerged. Ireland  -  which derailed the so-called Lisbon Treaty when voters rejected it in June  -  has been forced into holding a second referendum on the agreement. One diplomat said: ‘There is still some tweaking to do, but there is an understanding.’ Critics say that the Treaty is almost identical to the EU Constitution, rejected by the French and Dutch in 2005.’

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‘Benefit claimants will be subjected to lie detector tests to discover if they are cheating the system in a widespread Government crackdown. Unemployed people could also be forced to carry out “community punishments” such as litter-picking or gardening if they miss meetings designed to help them back into the workplace. And single parents and those on sickness benefits will have part of their weekly payments stopped for not keeping to a promise that they will make themselves ready for work.’

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There are a lot of ‘Tsars’ operating in and around British government these days.

I have just looked up that word in the dictionary. Tsar derives from ‘Caesar’ and it means TYRANT. But of course, it being a Russian word we don’t really understand, we naively let go of the fact that it has evil connotations.

Actually, it’s the corporate media that lets go of the fact. They choose names like ‘tsar’ for us; we the people are just on the receiving end.

I see this morning that the Government’s Climate Change Tsar, who goes by the name of Adair Turner (a smiling assassin; pictured below) is telling us that all households will have to contribute 500 pounds each in order to help fight Climate Change.

Climate Change - that’s a good one!

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‘A key element in any new initiative would be for the U.S. president to declare publicly what, in the view of this country, the basic parameters of a fair and enduring peace ought to be.

These should contain four principal elements: 1967 borders, with minor, reciprocal and agreed-upon modifications; compensation in lieu of the right of return for Palestinian refugees; Jerusalem as real home to two capitals; and a nonmilitarized Palestinian state.

 Something more might be needed to deal with Israeli security concerns about turning over territory to a Palestinian government incapable of securing Israel against terrorist activity. That could be dealt with by deploying an international peacekeeping force, such as one from NATO, which could not only replace Israeli security but train Palestinian troops to become effective.’

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Look at this move to try and push NATO into areas they were never mandated to go . The World Army in waiting.!  Note also the conditions they put forward Palestinian refugees to get compensation and not allowed to return home and Palestine to be Non Militarized. Well as long as Israel is Non Militarized also !

This looks very much like Problem - Reaction - Solution to me!

Lord Mandelson was at the centre of a row last night over ’secret’ plans to ditch the pound after an explosive claim that Britain is ready to join the euro.

The European Commission president said the UK was ‘closer than ever before’ to signing up to the single currency.

Jose Manuel Barroso said he had held private conversations with ‘the people who count in Britain’ and knew that they were ready to move into the euro-zone.

That was widely seen as a reference to Lord Mandelson, who said at the weekend that ‘our aim’ should be to join the euro.

Lord Mandelson was the loudest cheerleader for the single currency during his stints in Tony Blair’s Cabinet and has just been recalled from Brussels, where he was Britain’s EU Commissioner.

But now he appears at odds with his new boss Gordon Brown.

Downing Street denied there had been any policy shift and said it had ‘no plans’ to ditch the pound. Sources said the suggestion that Britain was ready to enter was ‘wishful thinking’.

Mr Barroso’s remarks led to a backlash in Westminster. Shadow foreign secretary William Hague pledged that there were ‘no circumstances’ in which a Conservative government would propose joining the euro.

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